Sometimes you bide your time and karma helps you along to get revenge. I like this OP’s story about getting revenge years after getting fired. Revenge is best served cold and when you have patience your revenge is much sweeter too.
Revenge is Best Served Cold
I was fired early in my career by a team of 2 senior people I reported to – revenge came in time.
(Edit Below for Clarification) When I was in my early 20s trying to make it in the world and just starting out I reported to a senior sales team as a junior salesperson. Really it was a support role and I knew my place- watch, stay quiet, learn and help them.I report to a lady who was ‘mid level’ and the senior guy who was head of sales. I was green, and while I was seeking mentorship and periodically asking for advice to improve how I was able to support them they mistook it for incompetence.
It was simple things like learning what format each of them preferred their daily reports in, and tasks they had to do.
I also had an issue because the senior guy basically stole my first bonus at the 3-month mark. It was tiny amount to him but a lot for young me. I didn’t officially complain but asked him about how he was able to keep my bonus when it was obvious it tracked back to my efforts on the data. He didn’t like that and didn’t pay me.
I was doing a good job – I’m fully aware of my skills. But with the explanation “It’s just not working out” they fired me a few weeks later. I spent a couple months getting a new job which turned out to be an amazing smaller firm where I was appreciated, mentored correctly and thrived. The new firm was very successful.
(They brought me into a room, the two of them, and fired me. SHE was the one who said It’s just not working out, and he said “so we’re letting you go” – even to my question as to why – since from the beginning I had been doing well)
About 2 years later after I’d become a vital-but-still-junior part of the smaller company, my former firm closed up in the region and put everyone out of work.
So I saw through the glass while walking by the boardroom one day that the senior guy who stole my bonus was being interviewed for a job at my current firm. My current superiors didn’t see me walk by but my old boss and I made eye contact.
Now, in a small sales team at a small firm its important to have a nice working relationship and trust. It’s also a lot of selfish salespeople who are there to make money and don’t like being ripped off. So later that afternoon I quietly mentioned to the one boss “I saw X in the office today when I walked by – I used to work for him that asshole stole my bonus one time”.
It was all I needed to say because the last thing my current boss needed was a person who’d do that on our team.
Then times got tough and I know that man spent 2 years looking for work.
6 or 7 years later I was at a new company in a more senior role and the one lady who I originally reported to called me and was selling at a new firm and she was calling to ask if I’d be interested in purchasing from her. I didn’t know she had started working there.
The firm she was with was selling something that was very basic – and interchangeable to competing firms. She’d gone from selling important things to selling a ‘nothing’ product after the original firm closed.
She acted all happy and nice to me – and recalled the great job I did when we worked together. I also know she didn’t want to be talking to me but her call log said she had to call.
I told her thanks and send me along an official quote and proposal. (several hours of work for her) .
In the industry we were in she was paid not only on new sales but a ‘net sales’ measurement – meaning she had to retain clients as well and bring in new ones.
I had a LOT of commitment at the firm she was now at. While she spent her afternoon drafting a proposal I spent a couple hours pulling all my business from that company and subbing it for a competitor up the street.
She emailed me a full proposal and mentioned she was excited to be working with me again and supporting my business. She had no idea yet i’d just pulled everything and she would never receive a bonus this year because of the size of the amount I pulled.
The next day she emailed me quite upset and had CC’d her boss who i’ve known for years and had a good working relationship with. I replied-to-all and thanked her and said I’d decided to go with a competitor because “It just won’t work out as I find your approach to business dealings to be insincere” .
Her boss emailed me back directly and asked what happened and I replied that i just don’t think she is a sincere person.
My business to their firm was worth more than her job and she didn’t last more than a month there after that.
The Final Word
You do have time to get revenge and sometimes the universe is on your side to help you get that long forgotten cold revenge. Don’t act hastily is the truth to this story.
